Category Archives: Politics

Yesterday, Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post published an interview he held recently with the new mayoral candidate, Jack Evans. You should definitely read it, but here’s a snippet:

Mike Debonis: But how do you get across to someone in Ward 7 or Ward 8 that Jack Evans — someone who has lived in Georgetown for 20 years, drives his car back and forth to the Wilson Building every day — how can he relate to what is going on in my community?

Jack Evans: Again, people will know I have been all over this city for many many years in many different capacities. When I started out I was on the D.C. Democratic State Committee. When I was in Ward 7 the other day, James Speight was there, who was chairman of the Historic Preservation Review Board when I was an ANC commissioner. Gladys Mack, who was on the Metro board with me. I think it transcends this concern of, who is this guy? They already know who I am, what I can do and what I will do as mayor.

His legal name might be Jack Evans, but in many people’s eyes he’s Jack the Georgetowner. Mike was not terribly harsh on Jack in his question, but the same question is going to be asked a lot and a lot harsher over the next year until the primary.

There’s a familiar trope among right-leaning pundits: the Georgetown cocktail party. It’s used to describe the supposedly out-of-touch limousine liberal attitude that dominates the Washington political social scene.

But as the election on Tuesday showed, maybe this trope is misplaced. You see, for Washington there sure are a lot of Republicans in Georgetown.

Versus the rest of the city, Georgetown’s two voting precincts didn’t produce the most votes for Romney as a matter of total votes or percentage; but they were close. Continue reading →

If you follow GM on Twitter, you’ll know that he’s a bit of a soccer fan. And while not that many people get up early on the weekends like GM just to watch the English Premier League, a whole bunch of kids in DC (including plenty of Georgetown kids) participate in the wonderful Stoddert Soccer league.

Unfortunately, this year the program was dealt a blow from the city. As the Chairman of Stoddert Soccer, Nick Keenan, wrote the groups participants:

The fields Stoddert Soccer players have used for decades – were being systematically shut out on weekday afternoons. It must be a mistake, we thought, but when we contacted the Department of Parks and Recreation we were told that, no, it’s not a mistake. It’s policy.

As the Post’s Mike DeBonis wrote yesterday: “Keenan blames private schools — particularly the Lab School of Washington and the Edmund Burke School — who use city fields for their own sports teams. In his Web missive, he said ‘political considerations’ were at play.”

Georgetown has already seen an example of a private school getting a special deal for exclusive use of a public field. In that case, the posh Maret school convinced the Fenty administration to let the school turn the Jellef fields into a modern artificial turf field in exchange for the school getting exclusive use of the field during most of the prime hours for ten years. Other schools have bitten off rather large chunks of time for public fields without having contributed what Maret did. For instance, despite having plenty of fields of its own, Sidwell Friends (tuition $34,000) has exclusive use of the Hearst fields weekdays until 5 pm. Continue reading →

Yesterday, the Georgetown Hoya student newspaper published a somewhat provocative editorial calling on students to not register to vote in DC and rather vote absentee in their home states.

The reasoning behind the piece was that with DC disenfranchisement in Congress and its guaranteed three electoral votes for Obama, students would “get more bang from their ballot” by voting in more competitive and consequential elections back home.

There’s some undeniable truth to this reasoning, but it’s myopic. The editorial throws a bone to the admirable DC Students Speaks effort, but kicks the legs out of that campaign by stating “it’s evident that poor student turnout in D.C. has been problematic.” In other words, because students don’t vote here, why bother voting here?

The heart of the editorial points to the slim 537 votes that George W. Bush beat Al Gore by in Florida in 200. It notes that 250 current Georgetowners are from Florida and concludes that “you never know beforehand if voting will make a difference.” Continue reading →

As you probably know, Mayor Vincent Gray is embroiled in a scandal relating to his 2010 campaign to defeat Adrian Fenty. There have been steady calls for his resignation (and, to be fair, other equally steady calls for him to remain in office pending the criminal investigation). While Gray has stated that he has no intention of stepping down, the gravity of the allegations swirling around him has lead to widespread speculation about his possible replacement.

First the good news: of the three councilmembers most likely to run for mayor (Evans, Muriel Bowser (D Ward 4), and Tommy Wells (D Ward 6)) Evans has the most citywide favorability rating. The bad news is that it’s only 35%. Bowser’s is 23% and Wells’s is 27%. (Click here for the rest of the poll numbers, some are rather eye-popping.) Continue reading →